Something Worth Finding
by Red Witch Studios
Summary: Chance encounters are the ones you should pay attention to as closely as you can. Chapter 4 is now up!
1. Something Worth Finding

Disclaimer: I own the rights to neither Elfen Lied nor Prototype. This is a work of fiction for entertainment only.

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What he wanted was simple in concept, and it always sounded plain and easy to get when he ran it over in his mind on a regular basis. Find something to believe in, find something worthwhile that can be held onto for as long as he lived for however long that was. The world is a huge place, full of all sorts of biomes, all sorts of countries, and all sorts of people. Finding that one elusive thing couldn't be _that_ difficult, could it? Statistics were on his side and everything! There was something worth living for, worth fighting for, something besides just defending himself every day. There was something more to life on this ridiculous little blue planet besides doing what everyone else thought he would do.

He didn't even dare to entertain such a notion after the day's events. It kept trying to slip into the very forefront of his mind whether he liked it or not, and his current house guest wasn't helping at all.

The United States wasn't exactly as homey-feeling as he had hoped while in Africa and Russia. It seemed like everywhere he went in the good ol' U.S. of A., his point kept being proven. He hated that point despite how eye-searingly obvious it was becoming that it was true no matter where he went. Humans were just selfish by nature. Born that way, nurtured that way, dying that way, yet living with the airs that they did care about others more than themselves. It was all just a farce. The gentlefolk of that sleepy Pennsylvanian town proved that point very well.

What drew him to a small town was the idea that big cities equal corruption. Too many people crammed together, becoming indifferent to anything but themselves, detached from their community. A small town wouldn't be like that, or so he assumed. Everyone in a small town knew everyone else. They clung together because there were fewer of them to know about. Hell, it was what those sappy TV dramas seemed to spout: get away from the city and raise your kids somewhere nice, safe, and quiet while surrounded by neighbors that care about you. It all seemed pretty and perfect on paper. Pretty, perfect, and so sugary sweet it could make you puke if you weren't prepared for it. The town seemed very much like that on the surface, even reassuringly so. Being proven wrong wasn't exactly his favorite thing in the world, but hey, this could be the exception. He could have stood to be wrong if it meant he was wrong about everything being dim and dark and hateful.

Unfortunately, he was proven right. As welcoming and wholesome as the town seemed to be, it too had a pitch black and ugly side. It wasn't turned his way for once, and that was perhaps the most shocking part of it all. For once, it wasn't his secrets being thrown out into the open and making him a target; _someone else_ was in his shoes this time. A girl, too. A pretty one somewhere around Dana's age, probably a couple years younger. At first glance, she seemed like the sort of kid who'd be out clubbing or hanging out with idiot friends while pretending to know everything about the arts. Something like that. Though that wasn't a fair assumption to make based solely on her having bright pink hair. It was odd, sure, but not_ that _odd. She could fit in fairly well even if she did get stares at her clearly rebellious choice in hairstyle. Alex only saw her once before it happened, in a bookstore. At the time, he only paid her any attention due to the fact that she stuck out even in her fairly plain, and a bit dirty, clothes. She bought a couple books in cash, didn't reply to the clerk when he asked her casual things about herself like where she came from and how long she'd stay, then left without a word.

He didn't know what happened after she left the store, but whatever it was had been enough to throw the whole town into an uproar just a few days later. He hadn't wanted to fight her, not after seeing her lay waste to people without even touching them, but there hadn't been any choice. Staying there too long was a bad idea of epic proportions, for both him _and_ her, so he stole away with her unconscious self before anyone else knew what even happened. There was a house in the next town he knew they could stay in, at least for a while. Best part? It was near the edge of the town too, so any dialogue they had wouldn't be interrupted by people concerned about the sounds of fighting going on. Well, he hoped she wouldn't try killing him again. Having a hole punched out of your chest tends to hurt, and even if you can't die from such a thing, it's annoying all by itself.

As he sat in the armchair of the borrowed living room, watching the girl laid out on the couch, a thought ran through his mind just as it had for the past hour or so. This was all a mistake; the girl would wake up, prove herself to be a nuisance, they would start fighting again, he would have to kill her, and so on. Getting rid of her right off the bat had been an attractive concept, and even as he sat there, waiting impatiently for her to wake up, he had to keep swatting away the idea like a persistent fly. Shame he couldn't backhand it away so hard it was crushed against the wall like an actual fly...or the occasional human.

Alex actually didn't know what to do when she woke up, and the lack of such knowledge left him just staring back at the wild-eyed girl as she sat up and hastily looked about her environs. The moment she opened her mouth to speak, he knew it was going to be a long, difficult endeavor to actually ask her anything. Of the many languages he could speak rather well thanks to devouring certain sorts of people, Japanese was one of those few for which he only knew a handful of words. He could understand it fairly well if she spoke slowly, but at the moment? Well, like many young ladies would do if they woke up to find themselves in a strange house in a strange man's company, the pink-haired woman was livid and speaking quickly to try and make herself seem less weak than she thought he assumed she was. Unlike other young ladies, though, she was tearing parts of the room apart in an attempt to scare him, and he inwardly chuckled at how her tantrum would definitely scare a human man out of doing something to her. Her telekinesis reached all over the room, it seemed, and light bulbs, picture frames, and even the TV cracked and broke into fine, tiny pieces. He would have remarked on the shame of losing the TV, but given the barrier between them, he was sure she wouldn't have found it very funny.

"Don't do that." he said, speaking slowly to make sure he got the syllables down right. "Won't work."

Him speaking her language, if horribly, did get her attention, and the girl leaned back a little to eye him more carefully. She didn't say anything else for an eerily long while and seemed content to just stare at him, studying him much like he'd done to her while she was asleep. Now that he had a better look at her face, he wondered how that clerk at the bookstore managed to conjure up the guts to talk to her at all. It was a miracle, definitely. He couldn't remember a moment in the store when her eyes lacked that overly harsh, piercing look they carried so well. It had been hard to tell from far away, but her eyes were red. Not the sort of red an albino might have, where the colorless irises simply reflected the blood vessels covering their retinas, but an actual red. The tiny, fibrous stroma weren't white, but instead were red themselves, and he could even swear there were shades of pink and magenta mixed in as well.

Pink hair that, upon closer inspection, was natural, red eyes with actual red-pigmented irises, and horns jutting out of her skull just above her ears; whatever this girl's genetics had done to her, it was enough to catch his interest. The horns were especially interesting, and had been one of the deciding factors in his decision to swipe her away before any tanks showed up. Packaged in with the powers she kept showing off so much, he wasn't sure he wanted to kill her anymore. It seemed like a shame, like a wasted chance to learn something new. After all, how often was it possible to talk to a mutant without bloodshed ruining the chance?

Alex did his best not to look _too_ intimidating as he sat up straighter and met her gaze. She wouldn't understand a single thing he said, and despite not knowing the fine details of her story, he could guess how it went. She wasn't a native of the country, possibly a runaway from Japan, taking her language into account. She came here after living a life he could only assume was unforgiving and cold, perhaps in search of a change, a new beginning. It was written all over her clothes, mixed in with the blood and dirt that caked the fabric. It was written on that tired face that still managed to look at him with a suspicious and maybe even hateful glare. He didn't blame her. He would be suspicious of a guy who took him to someone else's house after he could have sworn he punched his heart out.

"Trying to kill me again won't work," he sighed, lapsing back into English. She only looked befuddled by the words, leading him to just grin. He knew enough of her language to spit out an amused, "You have a cute face there, Kitten."

"Kit...ten?" she repeated, looking absolutely mystified. There was a nickname he was sure would stick. She probably wouldn't tell him her real name, especially not under the circumstances, but he still needed to call her something besides "you" or similar things. Even more encouraging was the faint hint of red he could see on her cheeks. Teasing her wouldn't strike many as a good idea, but what did he care?

Alex sat back in the chair, hood again covering his eyes as his head tipped downward, as he thought of what to say next. Cobbling the sentence together took concentration, and it was all the easier since she wasn't making a noise. Idly, he lifted one hand and held out the knitted cap he'd found on the ground near her. It was probably the only part of her attire that wasn't spattered with blood at the moment, having been dropped elsewhere. He looked up again and let his face soften a bit, just a little, as he leaned forward to hold the cap out to her.

"You...me...we want the same thing, right?"

She didn't even need to say anything for him to know he hit the mark; the look on her face was more than proof enough. Wide eyed, she was clearly taken aback and he could swear he could hear her brain chugging to catch up. Her eyes kept flicking between him and the cap as if unsure which was the safer place to focus on. The hint of red on her cheeks only deepened in color as well, mixing with her bewildered face brilliantly.

Carefully, like a child trying to pet a cat with a known history of biting everyone who touched it, she reached out to take the cap from his hand. He let it slide out of his grip easily, and, predictably, she hastily sat with her back against the couch to make sure he was well within her line of vision. So suspicious, still so confused . . . her expression worked well for him. It took far too much effort to say something meaningful and he didn't want to try again. Honestly, the sooner she learned English, the better. Asking her the specifics would go so much smoother when she could understand him, and when they weren't hiding out from a mass murder she caused in the next town over.

Letting her tag along would be a bad idea in the end and he knew it. Somehow it would definitely come back to bite him in the ass and he'd look back on the moment of decision with a groan and a shaky "oh well" sort of laugh. Until then . . . at the very least, he could stave off his boredom for a while. Maybe there would even be something worth finding once that barrier caved in.


	2. Thinking

Disclaimer: I own the rights to neither Elfen Lied nor Prototype. This is a work of fiction for entertainment only.

Given the interest in this supposed oneshot, I figured I might as well keep going. Chapters will be coming along slowly though, and I'm sure the rating will end up going higher as it goes along too. I hope you'll enjoy it :3

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As any foreign language professor will tell you, it takes immersion to learn a different language. Human beings pick up the rules of what words go where, the inflections, and all the other subtle nuances of a language when they're tiny and barely walking, and all because they're surrounded by their parents' language constantly. Even being bilingual is possible if the two languages are spoken regularly, and, in many cases, one language is used more at home than outside of the home. Overall though, you have to be assaulted by the language from all sides at all times. Alex knew that was the only way to speed up his companion's learning. Luckily for him, _she_ was the foreigner here, caught in a land with a language she only barely spoke, so adapting was just about all she could do. And she was doing it rather well, at least. If there was one thing he was pleasantly surprised to learn, it was that she was very intelligent, but he figured anyone who looked into those eyes of hers on a regular basis could pick that up for themselves. While speaking an eloquent sentence was still long out of her reach, he could tell she was beginning to understand him. Picking out words and phrases and being able to guess the meaning were just the start, but already she could somewhat get it across that she understood. Mostly her responses were a single word long, but that was enough for him to get it, especially with her body language taken into account.

The only downside he could think of to her being a quick learner was where they were traveling. For the past month or so, the odd pair had been trekking down the Appalachian area. He couldn't tell where they were right away, but he figured they were somewhere near Tennessee or North Carolina. It wasn't exactly easy to tell since they mostly kept to traveling at night and staying in small towns. Plus, he hadn't really thought about it much since he'd been preoccupied with making sure his companion got her daily English lessons. Since they were heading into the Southern States, he had to ask himself if he really wanted her to pick up a Southern accent or not. If nothing else it might be amusing, but he was sure she wouldn't appreciate him chuckling at her when she talked.

The month had definitely passed quicker than he'd thought, though the days had always seemed so slow and crawling. It was more eventful toward the beginning since his companion had proven herself to be something of a mule when it came to stubbornness. Getting out of that house he'd first taken her to took the better half of the afternoon and his patience, as she had still been hesitant to trust someone who should have died when her powers tore a hole into his chest. She'd even tried to run away before, but only once. She quickly discovered, much to her frustration, that running away from him was impossible. Just when she thought she was in the clear, there he'd been, arms folded behind his back, a smug grin on his face, and an entirely too innocent "Where you off to, Kitten?" to greet her. Afterward, it was like she gave up on it or realized neither one of them had much else to do. Alex was still looking for that purpose, and wherever she chose to walk, he ended up following her anyway so there just wasn't any point to running. It just made things easier to accept it, he figured, and it was better she learned that so he wouldn't have to keep reminding himself she could be a right pain to deal with.

The pair stopped at a service station early in the morning, but only Alex went inside. The horned woman stayed outside and took the opportunity to gather her thoughts. So rarely during the day did she ever get the chance since he was usually either talking to her or focused on keeping an eye out for some unseen enemy in the silence of the night. The diclonius folded her arms as she tried not to admit to herself that she actually didn't hate the companionship. As frustrating and annoying as the situation was with this arrogant hooded man, he spoke to her as if she was another person. She didn't have much to say, but when she did say something, he was always paying attention even if it was Japanese he couldn't understand or barely coherent English whose meaning he could only grasp in the context. She had been teased, bullied and harassed so many times before, but so many other people just _ignored_ her if they saw her. Even when they stopped in the sleepy towns along the roads, she still felt alien and bizarre to be near humans despite her horns being covered up. She could always feel them watching her, whispering about her. So many times she felt like turning to find the staring person so she could quietly snap their neck, but usually _he_ always showed up again as soon as she started entertaining the notion. After having a lifetime of no lasting friends or allies she could depend on, just having someone to talk to her like an actual person was something even _she_ could admit she liked. Of course, it was something she would never admit to even if she ended up speaking English as well as he did. She would rather die than let this frustrating man have the knowledge of her finding him tolerable to be around.

Inside the store, Alex was having his own speech problems, and all in the form of a chatty clerk. The elderly man was easily pushing eighty, and as he rung up the foodstuffs he kept prattling on and on.

"Never seen eyes that color before, son."

"I get that a lot."

"Remind me of m'son back when he was a soldier. Always good-lookin', bringin' home only the prettiest girls."

"Mmhm."

"Where y'headed?"

"Florida maybe. Not sure."

"What're you hopin' to do out there?"

"Visit a while, maybe." he said with a shrug.

"Just make sure y'watch out for those gators. They have 'em all over down there, don't they?"

"I guess so, yeah."

Paying in cash, he got out of the store as quickly as he could and had to resist the urge to sigh. Now he knew why she had stayed outside, she could probably tell chitchat was coming. Either that, or she just didn't want to be there in the first place. He looked to where she sat on the worn and rickety bench by the door and held up the plastic bag.

"Ready to go?"

He only got a nod as a reply as she stood up, and with her leading the way again, he fell into step beside her. The pair stayed close to the highway this time, and he always yielded the contents of the bag to her when she started getting peckish. He didn't really need to eat anyway, so it was all mostly for her.

The silence of their walking gave him plenty of time to think, and he began to wonder about what the old man had asked. _"What're you hopin' to do out there?" _It was a good question, and Alex almost stopped mid-step as the question sank in. What _did_ he hope to accomplish at the end of all this? What did he think would be waiting for him once he could finally talk to her? What would he learn? Would he be satisfied with the story she told, or would it just prove to have been a waste of time? And on that note, what sort of hardships was he expecting her to have witnessed just to satisfy his curiosity? Did he really want to be proven right that her life sucked? Worse than that, he started wondering about what to do afterward. What would be waiting for him, or better yet, for _her?_ A regular life? A regular house? A regular neighborhood? That just wasn't his style. At least, it wasn't anymore. He could thank his "dear ol' dad" for that. He forced himself to keep off that train of thought, knowing it wouldn't get him anywhere. The past was in the past, and angsting over it never did anyone any favors unless throwing one's self into a pissy mood counted as such a favor. He didn't have the luxury of returning to a fairly normal human life. That sort of thing was out of the question indefinitely, and just thinking about it was pointless. Hell, he was even chuckling under his breath at the thought!

He couldn't have what humans would call a normal life. But, looking at his companion, he realized she couldn't have that either. Neither of them would ever be allowed that sort of thing anyway; from their respective births, they both were constantly denied what every other baby girl and baby boy in the civilized world liked to call "typical life."

It was especially unfair for her, he thought. Compared to him, who had been alive for only a couple of years by now, she had close to two decades of misfortune. Her tale still only came out in bits and pieces due to that barrier they had between them, but he could still tell. Despite being young and pretty, in the prime of her life, her eyes were older beyond their years and worn. The only other people he'd seen with eyes like hers were grizzled men who fought in so many wars that they all seemed to blur together. It actually made him angry. This young woman was supposed to be enjoying life, maybe going to college, making friends, getting a job, maybe finding a decent guy she'd like to marry some day, and other little luxuries like that. Instead, she was stuck with him after so many years of loneliness he knew he probably could only barely begin to grasp, walking through backwoods country eating sugary gunk that had little nutritional value or sandwiches made by a Granny's hands. She was used to this kind of life, wasn't she? She was used to going through life on a day-by-day basis, taking what she needed to survive and showing off a face that said none of it ever got to her.

He knew better because he'd seen more than that. Sometimes she cried in her sleep. He never knew what to do when she did, other than to simply sit there by the motel bed as close as he dared and hope maybe his presence was close enough to soothe her subconscious. Touching her was out of the question. His powers let him regenerate, but potentially losing an arm in the process of squeezing her shoulder wasn't exactly appealing. Comfort was a strange thing to receive, but it was even stranger to give, especially for someone like him who had little to no experience in giving it at all. He didn't owe her anything, she was just supposed to be something to pass the time. A side project because he was curious, because she's a mutant and the scientist who provided his identity wouldn't let such a rare specimen escape without study.

And speaking of his identity, he didn't even know her name. He stuck to calling her by that one nickname for lack of anything else to call her, and it was at the point where she had apparently stopped caring he even called her that at all. He would have called it cute if he wasn't starting to feel like a jerk for it. He told her his name, though she never used it, but he hadn't asked for hers at all.

He only noticed he'd actually stopped when the diclonius was a few steps ahead of him, turned halfway toward him and with a look on her face that suggested she was a bit irritated. He shouldn't have felt sheepish, but he did and it was a miracle he kept it from showing on his face.

"You stop...?" she asked, her tone implying there was supposed to be a "Why" at the beginning.

"Sorry Kitten. Just thinking." Alex shrugged and took the steps necessary to put him near her again. Outwardly, he didn't appear to be out of sorts, leaving his companion to shrug it off. His thoughts weren't her problem or her concern. At least, she could say that all she wanted, but she still stood there and waited for him to snap out of his daydream before walking on again.

Maybe someday she would give him her name. He imagined it would be a beautiful one, though he couldn't place why. Just a fleeting thought.


	3. Scuffle

**Disclaimer:** I own the rights to neither Elfen Lied nor Prototype. This is a work of fiction for entertainment only.

I wish this website had a better system for replying to reviews, because addressing all the concerns and questions brought up in reviews is something I'd like to do often. For those wondering why it's more cerebral than action, don't worry! As this chapter and later ones will show, there will be plenty of action, but a story of action and violence isn't really my goal. There is no question that both Prototype and Elfen Lied are violent canons, and the protagonists of both are capable of truly horrific things and actually do terrible things within their respective canons. However, I didn't feel I could even begin writing this and telling the story I wanted to tell by focusing on action alone. Elfen Lied is incredibly psychological underneath the nudity, blood and gore, especially in regards to Lucy and why she is what she is, why she behaves the way she does. Prototype touches on the psychological aspect of why Mercer does what he does, but unfortunately, it falls short of what he would do outside of a violent environment. There are deeply human sides to both characters, and I plan to explore what can happen when they meet someone who can actually understand what it's like to be in their shoes. Making a story that didn't focus on Alex Mercer and Lucy as people didn't seem fair to them.

Chapter Four will actually be coming soon as well. It was originally written into this chapter, but due to pacing reasons I figured it best to split Chapter Three into two different chapters.

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Humans could be so stupid. It was really rather hilarious, actually, or at least it was to the diclonius. Lucy could never understand how the troublesome species had a knack for getting in her way. Somehow, in some way, they were always causing some mess for her to clean up. Well, calling it "cleaning up" wasn't really that fitting. Slicing them in half usually tossed a good bit of blood around, and gore tended to constitute a mess. But why split hairs? If they were brazen enough to come at her with the intent to hurt her or intimidate her, they deserved it. Human men were always especially stupid in that regard too. Her being a woman seemed to be all the incentive they needed to think they had a right to assault her, and oh, how delightful it was to teach them their place!

That night was one of those nights. A bar along Highway I-24, in the outer reaches of Nashville, proved to be a very, _very_ poor choice of a place to stop and grab food. All it took was one slur in Lucy's direction, one she understood very well thanks to a certain person's tutelage, to have one 20-something-year-old's face lethally punched into his cranium and the entire bar fled the scene. At least, the people who had any sense left fled. The dead man's friends were on both Alex and Lucy in an instant, thinking they could actually get some kind of revenge before the police showed up. Alex had every intention of just killing them and getting it over with, but the pink-haired woman shot him a glare that had him reconsidering not out of fear but out of curiosity. Did she mean to handle this herself? After a moment, just a moment so their attackers could advance a few steps, he just shrugged and stepped back, holding his hands out in a placating manner. Who was he to stop her fun?

"Go for it, Kitten."

The grin on her face was something wicked indeed. The first of the five lost his head and had it thrown at the bartender, who yelped and crashed back into the racks of bottles behind the counter. While the four looked on in shock, another one had his torso sliced open from navel to collarbone, showing bright red blood and dark red muscle, before he was tossed into a mounted deer torso hanging up on one of the walls. He hit the mount with a crunch, and shortly after the entire thing hit the floor with a crash of wood and bone. One of the remaining men had the good sense to back up just out of her range, but a couple steps was all it took to have him right back where she could grab him and split him in half vertically. His two friends didn't fare much better: one had his sternum crushed, sending slivers of the chest bone into his heart. It wasn't enough to kill him, but he was still alive as she stood over his crumpled form and two unseen hands began to squeeze his head. Tighter and tighter, the pressure continue to build higher and higher and higher until his eyes popped out of their sockets and his skull caved in like an overripe melon. The last man could only sit and watch in horror, urine staining his jeans dark blue, and he tried to scoot away from his friends' killer in fright. Slowly, the diclonius' head turned toward him, and the sheer cold of those blood-colored eyes nearly had him fainting in terror.

Alex had his head tilted slightly to the side as he watched the entire event pan out. Watching her kill someone was strangely thrilling; it had been so back in Pennsylvania, and it was certainly so now. It always seemed to happen in slow motion for him, letting him commit every moment of it to his memory. Fighting usually took so much energy for everyone else. Humans mastered weapons and technology so they wouldn't be caught unawares by those night creatures with fangs and claws or even by their neighbors and their own weapons. But her? She wasn't even _moving_ most of the time. She was just standing her with her arms folded as if she was _bored_, and the look on her face even suggested she found the entire thing tiring. It was almost absurd, really, that she could so quickly go from excited to bored as soon as the bloodshed actually started. He couldn't blame her, though. Her powers reminded him of his blade arm, his claws, his tendrils or some combination of the three, and anyone who couldn't defend against her powers was just unsatisfying.

A thought crossed his mind as she finished plucking the last of the man's limbs out of its socket: if fighting regular people bored her, maybe he could come up with a way to spar with her without hurting her. It would give her an actual challenge and the perfect chance to vent out some frustration she might still have against him, and it had a bonus for him too. He would get the chance to show off his own powers, which he as of then had been very careful to hide from her. She'd seen much in her life, but he could guess she hadn't seen anything like him before, and it would be better to ease her into it rather than possibly scare her off. Scaring her would undo the entirety of his efforts, especially if she ran away or he had to kill her. He hated wasting time, and he wasn't particularly savvy on killing her after taking so much trouble to keep an eye on her already. That, and it seemed a shame to kill someone so pretty.

An arm landed near his foot with a wet splat, but thankfully none of the blood spattered onto his pants or his boots. Alex glanced down at it much like someone would look at a fallen Autumn leaf.

"Neat." he chuckled under his breath.

She spoke up, and his head picked up so he could watch her talk. He couldn't tell for sure, but her tone of voice suggested she was mocking the fools that dared to come against her. Alex felt a bit annoyed she wasn't doing so in English, as he vividly recalled teaching her a few insults just for an occasion like this. Well, maybe it just slipped her mind in the heat of the moment. It made sense. He wondered if he should rethink the idea of teaching her English. There were easier ways to talk to her. Actually, he _could_ just consume someone fluent in Japanese to make it easier. But when he thought about it, he saw no reason why _he_ should be the one to change. _She _was the one in a foreign country, and he had enough languages swimming around in his head already. Come to think of it, he had enough _people_ in his head already. Besides, there was basically nothing else for him to do since returning to the States. Going back to New York could wait, as he could only see something bad happening soon. Bad things just revolved around him like a magnet, and part of him didn't want to ruin the hard work of the Marines who were almost blamed by Blackwatch for the entire mess of Blacklight's outbreak. He ate several of their men, he could actually count how many if he gave enough of a damn, so he figured they deserved a break. It was never bad to have little projects to keep one busy, and _she_ was his project.

The wail of sirens caught his ears, and based on their distance, he and his companion had less than three minutes to vacate the premises before they had to kill even _more_ people. The scrolling noise of a bottle moving across the floor turned his attention back to the bartender, who was trying to get out from behind the counter and leave through the kitchen exit. Alex sighed and his fist shot out toward the man, changing into a sharp-tipped tendril to spear through the back of the man's neck. He fell to the floor like a doll off a shelf, and slowly a deep red pool spread out from his head.

"C'mon, we gotta go." he said, touching the diclonius' shoulder as he walked up behind her. His hand was smacked away the second it landed on the warm flesh exposed by her low-collared sweater, and her head whipped around fast so she could glare at him, hair hitting her face from how fast she turned. The hooded man gave her a tired look and gestured toward the door instead. "Let's go. _Now_."

She knew damn well what he'd said, and he knew it too, but still she watched him for a few seconds as if sizing up her next victim. He had half a mind to play this stupid little game of hers and stare back for as long as she wanted the contest to go on, but they had no time to mess around. He gave her a light shove, barely a pat on the back, to get her moving forward.

"Bitch at me later. We've gotta leave."

The sirens growing louder amplified the urgency in his voice, and finally she broke her gaze away from him and huffed like a child who lost a fight.

"Fine. Let's go," she muttered. She all but kicked the door down and stalked outside, and he was quietly laughing again as he followed her. The pair vanished into the darkness, and a stolen pair of keys got them a four-door pickup to escort them down the highway. The tank was only a quarter full, but it would do for the time being.

The drive away from Nashville was quiet, much like it always was when the two of them were traveling. The quiet rumble of rubber tires against road didn't quite cut it for background noise, so after ten minutes of silence, Alex reached over to fiddle with the radio stations. The pickup's radio was useless, only picking up static for most of the frequencies, but finally he settled on one that played 80s rock at all hours of the night. There was still a bit of crackling here and there, but it made for decent white noise just so it wasn't eerily quiet anymore.

She watched his hand the entire time, as it had apparently come too close to her in the simple act of changing radio stations. When his hand retreated back to his lap, she was still glaring at him, and he could only groan inwardly at what he figured was the reason. Was she _still _mad about him touching her? Good lord, he couldn't roll his eyes enough. Having her stare at him the whole time would only distract him, so he figured it best to put an end to that as swiftly as possible.

He met her gaze with a hard stare of his own, not even flinching as their eyes met. A flash of alarm lit across her face as she realized he wasn't watching the road, and she broke the gaze to look back to the road. Her mouth stayed in a grim line as the truck continued rolling along, and her grip on her seat tightened just a little as he actually stepped on the gas to take their speed up ten more miles per hour. He didn't stop staring, though, and instead took a perverse humor out of her looking increasingly worried they might crash. They wouldn't, his peripheral vision and his night vision were too good to allow that to happen, but she didn't know that. For all she knew, he was crazy enough to prove a point.

"Eyes! Road! Watch it, dammit!" she snarled, pointing at the windshield rather insistently. Alex kept his face blank as he watched her a few seconds longer, then a triumphant smirk broke across his lips and he returned his attention to the road. Right away she wanted to punch him, with her hands, her vectors, or both, but didn't since that probably would send them hurdling into a ditch on the side of the road. With a frustrated grumble, she leaned back into her seat and muttered disgruntled and unintelligible sentences at him. He gathered that the pissed off string of Japanese words were meant to call him something horrible, but that only made his grin even wider. He won, that was all that mattered. Sure, it was rather childish of him, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. It was her own fault as far as he was concerned.


	4. Fertile

**Disclaimer:**I own the rights to neither Elfen Lied nor Prototype. This is a work of fiction for entertainment only.

* * *

When they finally pulled into a motel some time around 4am, he told her to stay put in the car. She was sleeping and only offered a grumble before trying to get comfortable again with her head pressed into her hand against the window. Alex slid out of the truck with a small laugh under his breath, and once outside, he stretched out his arms and legs and groaned. The tension in the enclosed space of the vehicle hadn't mixed well at all with the lingering scent of the blood spattered over her boots and the cuffs of her jeans, and he was glad to be out of the car and in the fresh air again.

The horned woman sleepily watched him head into the front office, and she looked around the front seat of the truck to look for her backpack. She let out a "tch" that was meant to stand in for a vile curse, but rather than actually say anything, she rubbed her fingers into her temples to soothe away the budding headache. It just figured she lost the bag with all her clothes in it in all the excitement in the bar. Damn humans just couldn't leave well enough alone, could they? It was all their fault, just like everything else. She forced herself away from that line of thinking and told herself she would just have to deal with it proactively; just sitting there wouldn't help any.

The motel had a laundry room around a nearby corner, and based on the faint whirring she could hear in that direction, there were clothes washing there already. She looked once more to the office, and with no sign that Alex would be coming out soon, she slipped quietly out of the car. The door's lock clicked into place, but it was still slightly ajar from not being closed properly. Without making a sound, Lucy made her way into the laundry room and looked over the four machines: two washers, two driers. Nudity was never really a problem for her before, but only having one set of clothes bothered her solely because hell, she still liked being clean. That, and there was another problem besides her lost clothes, one she didn't want him to figure out right away. It wasn't any of his business.

Checking the driers came first. Still warm within one were two pairs of pants, men-sized, and several men's shirts. She took the shirts, figuring they would make for decent sleeping clothes, and checked the next drier. Children's clothes and a dress inside that one, as well as two fresh pairs of ladies underwear. The washers had more women's clothes, shorts, T-shirts and tanktops, so she took them as well, leaving the men or child-sized clothes they were mixed in with alone. No shoes to be found, naturally, but she could just scrub the blood off her boots later. A process she was used to by now.

It was actually hilariously nostalgic, and she only realized it as she climbed back into the truck with the bundle of both wet and dry clothes in her arms. Skulking about under the cover of darkness and stealing clothes from unsuspecting passers-by, for a moment she was taken back to a small town, many years ago. Before she could delve too deeply into her thoughts, Alex rapped his knuckles on the window and gestured for her to come out, a room key dangling from his fingers. She gave him a tired look, but nonetheless climbed out and followed him to the room. She even pushed her way past him as soon as the door was open, and soon the hiss of the shower and the rattling of water droplets against the bath wall echoed through the room.

The heat of the water was a soothing blessing for her nerves. Sitting down on the floor of the shower let the water wash over her without even an inch being spared for the slightly colder air of the bathroom, but the steam soon made any "cold" a trifle to even think about. Automatically she fell into the motions of washing herself from top to bottom, taking special care with shampooing her hair and the horns within it, and her mind wandered back to the particular days of her past when she was still just a little kid, a preteen, fending for herself on the streets. Baths were taken in local bathhouses, food and clothes were stolen with great regularity from stores or, occasionally, the house of an unfortunate family. Looking back on it, she actually did feel bad for killing entire families just for a place to stay for a few days. They had never done anything wrong, and usually they were minding their own business, going about their evening routines, when she paid them a fateful visit. However, whatever guilt might have tugged at her was, as always, violently shoved aside by the fact that none of those families would have cared about her. She was a mutant, an orphan, unwanted refuse from a world she never even wanted to be born in, so why would they care? Didn't the human race _owe_ her some kind of luxury? Didn't she _deserve_ to take what she wanted from them so she could carve out a tiny place for herself _somewhere?_ That was really all she ever wanted: a place for herself to belong. Why, then, was it so damn hard to actually obtain? Every other human got to have such a thing, so why couldn't she have it too? Why couldn't she have the one thing she ever wanted?

Speaking of that one thing she truly wanted, she froze in the middle of rubbing conditioner into her hair as a strange thought bubbled up to the surface. Companionship was what she wanted most. A place to belong was her greatest wish. It was the one wish she carried close to her heart for so many years. So many painful years. Kouta couldn't grant such a wish because of her own sins against him. Aiko couldn't grant it because she had died protecting her. There was literally nobody else in the world who ever looked at her and saw someone worth talking to, someone worth knowing. There was nobody else . . . except for that infuriating hooded idiot in the next room.

For reasons she wasn't sure she wanted to understand or know, he wouldn't leave her alone. He was always there, ever since that day, and wouldn't let her leave either. Trying to get away from him had only proven he would tag along wherever she tried to run. Maybe he was like the others, only pretending to be a nice person so he could betray her when she left herself wide open. It certainly wouldn't be the first time, and she would hate herself forever more if she actually let such a disaster happen again. However, as small a possibility as she would allow it to appear to her, maybe he was actually genuine? Maybe he followed her around and led her through all those places because he truly understood what it felt like to be alone? He _did _say, that first day they met, that they wanted the same thing. They were looking for the same thing.

But what were the odds they both wanted to have someone else beside them to make the world seem a little less lonely?

That headache came back in full swing, so she tiptoed away from it by focusing on what to do about supplies. She would need to get food soon, clothes, and a new backpack. With or without money, acquiring those would be simple enough. Yes, those things were okay to think about. As long as she stayed thinking about the present and her own needs, nothing else mattered. Not the past, not the future, not him, nothing. To further distract herself, she rinsed the soaps and conditioner from herself and instead took to washing her clothes in the shower as well. Body soap wasn't as good as detergent, but it would do for now. At the very least, it would clean the blood out of the fabric.

While she reminisced, Alex was busy thinking of the next steps they were to take. The pair had been meandering a while, with no real goal in sight, and he had to wonder how long they could keep to such a schedule before either of them got bored. Colorado seemed like a decent place to visit. Going through major cities wasn't a good idea for either of them, especially not with her being irritable even in small towns and him being, well, _him_. They could go to one if they had to, perhaps for the strange safety in numbers of people, but other than that, not a good idea. The mountains, though, seemed suitable enough. There were several trails they could follow . . .

He stopped himself and reeled back to the present. The mountains? Solitude? Quiet? It was all well and good, but all that awaited in such conditions was spending time with her, teaching her. She still didn't trust him as far as she could throw him, and the only thing keeping her from trying to run away again was his ability to chase her down before she even got far. Alex grunted and gave up trying to reason with himself. He dropped the train of thought from his mind entirely; it could be picked up again when there wasn't so much going on, perhaps.

With her shower taken care of and her clothes viciously scrubbed with whatever soap she could find, Lucy emerged from the bathroom dressed in shorts and a T-shirt far too big for her. She looked ready to just collapse into bed, but before doing so, she spared him a look. Just a look, no more than that, since he was clearly too far gone in his thoughts to reply to anything she might have said. He didn't even seem to notice she was there at all as she climbed into her bed and settled into sleep. Instead, he kept looking out the curtained window to keep an eye on the car. Odds did exist that someone might be looking for the truck, and finding it in a motel with a shady couple checked into a room would just make things annoying. As if things weren't bad enough within her bitching at him for no reason or his own mind betraying him by taking off on weird tangents. He stayed that way for several hours, not even moving save for his eyes glancing here and there beyond the window.

The digital clock between the beds clicked away another hour. A familiar scent hit his nose, and he blinked a few times as he recognized it. Blood? But she'd changed clothes. Earlier he smelled the blood scent on her clothes grow fainter and fainter as she scrubbed away at them in the bathroom, so why would it come back up so strongly now? And in her direction. She couldn't be hurt, he would have noticed such a thing prior to this.

Suddenly a switch flipped on in the back of his mind, and it was _very_ clear how dangerous she really was to humans. He knew how deadly she could be with those things she only called "arms," how she could rip people to shreds if they so much as looked at her funny, but now . . . now she had another hazard to her. She was going through the same horrible monthly process all women her age underwent, the process that meant they were ready to prolong humanity's existence for one more generation. She was dangerous because she was _fertile_.

Dumbstruck, he just stared at her from his seat at the table by the window. It wasn't clear how long he'd stayed that way, but the sun was sending tiny rays of light into the room from the slightly open curtain by the time he returned to reality. Finally he settled back against the chair and ran a hand through his hair, knocking his hood back in the process, as he tried to process the new information that kept swimming around and around in his brain. Several times he tried to kickstart his brain into a train of coherent thoughts, but it just refused to listen. All he could focus on was the fact that the progenitor of an entirely new species was sleeping not even five feet away from him. It was definitely something the scientist in him would leap over tables about. Most mutants in a species were sterile because of the way their genes worked, but she wasn't. She functioned as well as a human woman. She could reproduce and create an offshoot of _Homo sapiens _if she was so inclined. Whatever man she might choose for herself would be lucky not only for having her as a companion, but for being the progenitor of an entire new species.

She could be another Elizabeth Greene.

It was very interesting. Perhaps _too_ interesting, and the fact that it even crossed his mind at all left him feeling more than mildly uncomfortable. He spared the horned woman another glance, this one more troubled than the last, and silently stood up. The early morning air was ready to welcome him as he stepped outside, and it offered some semblance of clarity as he walked a few laps around the motel's exterior to get his bearings back.


End file.
